Exploring Technical and Creative Posts in Online Live Coding Communities: An Analysis of Tidal Club and in_thread

Live coding is a performance art in which media, commonly music and video, are generated and manipulated with open-source tools. While live coding initially centered upon local meet-ups, many individuals and loosely organized groups now learn, collaborate, and share work online. This expansion of interest may offer new, informal opportunities to learn computer programming, but little is known about how releveant online forums operate. To better understand this online space, we gathered and analyzed content from 414 threads in two popular live coding forums, Tidal Club and in_thread. We found that while both communities include discussions about using and extending core programming tools, significantly more posts on Tidal Club pertain to installation difficulties, while in_thread possesses a wider culture of sharing creative artifacts. We reflect on these findings and offer suggestions for future work in understanding the motivations behind why live coders post code, how they receive help, and the extent to which informal learning in live coding forums aligns with formal computer programming and music teaching.